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Out of the Depths: A Romance of Reclamation, a novel by Robert Ames Bennet |
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Chapter 33. Friends In Need |
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_ CHAPTER XXXIII. FRIENDS IN NEED Because of the moonlight she did not heed the graying of the east. But the whinnying of the picketed horses roused her from the apathy of misery into which she had sunk. She stood up and looked along the ridge. A small roundish object appeared above the crest--then others. They rose quickly--the heads of riders spurring their horses up the far side of the ridge. Singly, in pairs, in groups, the rescuers burst up into view and came loping down to her, shouting and waving. In the lead rode her father and the sheriff; in the midst Genevieve, between two attendant young punchers. In all, there were nearly two dozen eager, resolute men, everyone an admiring friend of Miss Chuckie, everyone zealous to serve her and hers. The girl stood waiting beside the fire. She had tried to run to meet them and found that she could not move. The suddenness of their coming after all that fearful night of waiting seemed to numb her limbs. They rushed down upon her, waving, shouting questions. Her father, on Rocket, was the first to reach her. He sprang off and ran to put his arm about her quivering shoulders. "Honey! it's all right now!" he assured her. "We're here with everything that's needed. We'll soon yank him up out of that hole!" The baby, frightened by the rush and tumult of the off-leaping riders, began to scream. Someone took him from the girl's arms and handed him to his mother as she was lifted down out of her saddle. Isobel pressed her face against her father's sweaty breast. "Hold on, Miss Chuckie!" sang out one of the men. "Don't let go yet. Where's Gowan--Kid Gowan?" She shuddered convulsively, yet managed to reply: "He--was trying to--to roll the rock down. Tom, my brother, is right below it. I heard and came to see. His back was to me. I could not shoot--I could not raise my pistol. When I spoke, he whirled and shot at me. He--" "Kid--shot at you?" cried Knowles. "At you? 'Tain't possible!" "He didn't mean to. He fired before he saw who I was. Then he saw. He forgot everything--everything except that he had shot at me. He backed off--there--over the edge!" A sudden hush fell on the excited crowd. One man went to peer down from the place to which the girl had pointed. He came back softly. "Same place where the last bunch of sheep went over," he said. "Rest of us were pretty sick--ready to quit. He kept after them until the last ewe jumped. Said they'd gone to hell, where they belonged." "He's the one that's gone there!" said the sheriff. "Look at the way this bowlder is pried loose, ready to roll over! Once heard tell that his real dad was Billie the Kid. Some of you mayn't have heard tell of Billie. He was the coldest blooded, promiscuous murderer of them days when we used to drive from Texas to Montana and the boys used to shoot-up towns and each other just for fun. Well, this Kid Gowan has got Billie's eyes and slit mouth. Can't say I ever took to him, but seeing as how he was a crack-up puncher and Wes Knowles' foreman--" "That's it! I can't understand it--Kid has been almost like a son to me all these years!" complained Knowles perplexedly. He explained to his daughter. "You're wondering why I didn't come sooner, honey. Those Utes had been let go. We had to follow them up a long ways. When we got them back and put them on that trail from the waterhole, they found it led straight across the flats to where the horses and wagon had stood. There the tracks of the Indian shoes ended, and the tracks of shod hoofs led off into the brush. We followed them all the way 'round to the lower waterhole and up the lower creek to the ranch, and there they took us right to Rocket's heels. The Jap said Kid had his saddle in the wagon when he came back from town, and he had a new hat. Mr. Blake did some hot shooting at that assassin on the hill. So, putting two and two together--" "Oh, Daddy, I know--I knew when I saw him look at Lafe!" "The--" Knowles choked back the epithet. "Yes, Mrs. Blake told us about that--and about her husband! Jumping Jehosaphat! Think of his being your brother! You must have been plumb locoed, to keep still about that! Why didn't you tell us, honey?--leastways me, your Daddy!" "I--I--But about Genevieve? Tell me. You could have come sooner if she--Was she lost? I was sure that pony--" "Better have given her a fast one. It came on so dark before he was half down the mountain that she was knocked out of the saddle by a branch. He went on down to the waterhole. She tried to catch him--couldn't. Got lost and wandered all around before she got down to the waterhole and caught him. We had got to the ranch at dusk, and all the posse had turned in for the night. She came loping down the divide just after moonrise. We started as soon as we could rake up all the picket-pins and rope. Wanted Mrs. Blake to wait and come on later; but talk about grit! We simply couldn't make her stay behind." Isobel thrust herself free from her father's arms and darted out through the circle of rugged, earnest-faced punchers and cowmen to where Genevieve lay resting with the baby clasped to her bosom. "Dear! you poor dear!" she murmured, kneeling to stroke the head of the weary young mother. "I shall soon be rested," replied Genevieve. "How about Tom? Have you kept watch of him? Has he moved?" The girl shrank back, unable to face her sister-in-law's eager look. "No--I--The fire--it--it disappeared, and I could not see." Genevieve smiled, and the reddening dawn lent a trace of color to her pale face. "It was a good sign. He could not have been suffering so much. He must have slept, and the fire died down." "Oh! you think that was it?" sighed Isobel. "I feared--" She did not say what it was she had feared. As she paused Genevieve looked up into her agitated face and asked quickly: "But Lafayette? Is he still sleeping?" "Yes, where's Lafe, honey?" inquired Knowles. "We'll have to roust him out to tell us just what way he came up." "Haven't I told you?" cried Isobel, her head still in a whirl of conflicting emotions. Then, as tersely and quietly as her father would have related it, she told the bald facts of how Ashton had been wakened by the snarl of the wolf, how he had insisted upon going back to help her brother, and how he had gone down into the darkness, the pack and lantern slung over his shoulder. "By--James!" vowed Knowles, when she had finished. "Any man on the Western Slope say that boy's not acclimated, he'd better look for another climate himself." "Gentleman," the sheriff addressed the exclaiming crowd, "you heard tell what the little lady had to say about her husband and this Lafe Ashton going down into Deep Canyon, where no man ever went before. Now Miss Chuckie has told us again how Ashton climbed up here, where no man in this section had a notion anything short of a mountain sheep could climb. Well, what does the gritty kid do but turn round and climb down again--in the dark, mind you! They're down there now, both of them--down in the bottom of Deep Canyon. We called them tenderfeet, that day when Mr. Blake honored our county seat by sidetracking his palatial car. Boys, down there in that hole are the two nerviest men I ever heard tell about. One of 'em has a broken leg. The other has broke the trail for us. I ask for volunteers to go down with me and yank 'em up out of there. Gentlemen, who offers?" Instantly the crowd surged forward. Every man shouted, whooped, struggled to thrust himself ahead of the others and force the acceptance of his services on the sheriff. "Hold on, boys!" he remonstrated. "Just hold your hawsses. I didn't ask for a stampede. You can't all go down. Last man over might get in a hurry to catch the first, and start a manslide." "I vote we set a thirty-year limit," put in one of the younger punchers. This raised a clamor of dissent from the older men. "Tell you what," shouted another. "Let Miss Chuckie cut out the lucky ones." "That's the ticket--Now you're talking!" Every man shouted approval, and fell silent as Isobel sprang up from beside Genevieve. "Friends!" she exclaimed, her eyes radiant, "it's such times as these that makes life grand! I believe six of you would be enough, but I'll make it ten. First, I'm going to bar everyone who has a wife or children." "That doesn't include me, honey," hastily protested her father. "Then you come in the next--none over thirty-five nor under twenty." A groan arose from some of the youngsters, but the older men took their disappointment in stolid silence. She went on with calm decisiveness: "Now those of you that have done any considerable mountain climbing afoot this summer, please step this way." Two members of a recently disbanded surveying party, four punchers who had tried their luck at prospecting on the snowy range, and three wild horse hunters sprang forward in response to the request. "That's enough," said the sheriff. "I've got to own up to being forty. But I'm leading this here posse, and I'll eat my hat if I can't outclimb anything on two legs in this county. String out your ropes, boys, and pass over all them picket-pins. We'll need a purchase now and again, I figure, hauling up Mr. Blake. Hustle! Here's the sun clean up." Under the brusquely jovial directions of their leader, the lucky nine divested themselves of spurs and cartridge belts, tied themselves to the line at intervals of several feet, and promptly started down the dizzy ledges. The others helped them during the first fifty yards of descent with the line that Isobel had drawn up after it had been cast loose by Ashton. They then gathered along the brink, enviously watching the descent of their companions into the shadowy abyss. Genevieve came to where Isobel and her father crouched beside the others. "Thomas will not let me put him down, Belle," she said. "I see you left the glasses beside the rock. If Lafayette has reached the bottom safely--" "If--safely!" echoed Isobel. "Daddy, you look--quick, please!" Knowles hastened to skirt along the brink to where the little field glasses lay at the near side of the split rock. The two followed him, Genevieve smiling with pleasant anticipation, Isobel trembling with doubt and dread. The cowman stretched out on the rim shelf and peered over. "Um-m-m," he muttered. "Can't see anything down there. Too dark yet." "Look straight below you," said Genevieve. "Hey?--Uh! By--James! Well, if that ain't a picture now! These sure are mighty fine little glasses, ma'am. I can see 'em plain as day." "Them?--you say 'them,' Daddy?" cried Isobel. "Sure. Come and look for yourself. Guess Lafe is fixing Mr. Blake's leg.--Which reminds me, honey, that before we left the ranch, Mrs. Blake had me send for that lunger sawbones that's come to live at Stockchute. He'll be here, I figure, before or soon after the boys get Mr. Blake up into God's sunshine." "Brother Tom, Daddy--you mean my Brother Tom!" joyfully corrected the girl as she took the glasses. "Well, you've got to give me time to chew on it, honey. It's come too sudden for me to take it all in." He stood up and gazed gravely at the smiling mother and her comforted baby. "Hum-m-m. Then that yearling is my Chuckie's own blood nephew. Well, ma'am, what do you think of it, if I may ask?" "Can't you make it 'Jenny,' Uncle Wes?" asked Genevieve. He stared at her blankly. "But I didn't adopt him, ma'am--only her." "He is the brother of your dear daughter, and I am his wife. Come now," she coaxed, "you must admit that brings me near enough to call you 'Uncle Wes.'" "You've got me, ma'am--Jenny. I give in, I throw up the fight. That irrigation project now--Chuckie's brother can have anything of mine he asks for. Only there's one thing--you've got to make that yearling say 'Granddad' when he talks to me." "O-oh!" cooed Genevieve. "To think you feel that way towards him! Of course he shall say it. And I--Will you not allow me to make it 'Daddy'?" He could not resist her enticingly upturned lips. He brushed down his bristly mustache, and bent over awkwardly, to kiss his new daughter. "Thought you were one of those super-high-toned ladies, m'm--Jenny," he remarked. The cultured child of millions smiled up at him reproachfully. "What! after I have been with you so long, Daddy? But it's true there was a time--before Tom taught me that men cannot be judged by mere polish and veneer, or the lack of polish and veneer." Isobel, all her doubts and fears allayed, had risen from the precipice's edge in time to hear Genevieve's reply. She added eagerly: "Nor should men be judged by what they have been if they have become something else--if they have climbed up--up out of the depths!" "Belle! dear Sister Belle! Then he has proved it to you? Oh, I am so glad for you! He has proved to you that he has climbed--to the heights." "To the very heights! I must tell Daddy. Give me Thomas. See, he is fast asleep, the poor abused little darling! Go and watch them, and our climbers. They are going down like a string of mountain sheep." Genevieve placed the baby in his aunt's outstretched arms and went to look into the abyss through the field glasses. Isobel drew her father away, out of earshot of the down-peering group of men. She stopped behind the tent, which Gowan had pitched part way up the slope of the ridge. "You want to talk with me about Lafe, honey?" surmised Knowles, as the girl started to speak and hesitated. Her cheeks flamed scarlet, but she raised her shyly lowered eyes and looked up at him with a clear, direct gaze. "Yes, Daddy. He--he loves me, and I--love him." "That so?" said Knowles. His eyes contracted. It was his only betrayal of the wrench she had given the tender heart within his tough exterior. "Well, I figured it was bound to come some day. I've been lucky not to lose you any time the last four years." "You--you do not say anything about him, Daddy." "Haven't you cut him out of the herd?" he dryly replied. "That's enough for me, long as I know he's your choice and is square." "He has nothing; he is very poor." "He's got the will to work. He'll get there, with you pushing on the reins. That's how I size him up." "But, Daddy, he told me he had been bad, very bad." Knowles searched the girl's face, with a sudden up-leaping of concern--that vanished as quickly before what he saw in her clear eyes. "Might have expected it of you, honey. You stand by him. You've got sense enough to know what it means when a man thinks enough of a girl to tell her the wrong things he has done. I was wild, too, when I was a youngster. There was a girl I thought enough of to tell. She wasn't your kind, honey. It came near sending me to the devil for good. You know better. No girl ought to be fool enough to hitch up with a man to reform him. But if he has already taken a brace and straightened the kinks out of himself, that's different." "He has come up, Daddy--out of the depths." Knowles only half caught her meaning. "Sure he climbed up. That proves he has the grit and the nerve. He had proved that even better, going down at the other place. Put any man down there, and he'd make a try to get out. No, the real test was his going back down again. He might have come up just for himself. But going down again--that's the proof of what's in him; that's what proves he's white!" "Dear Daddy!... But I'm afraid. He thinks he has been too bad ever to--to marry me. I'm so afraid he'll go away and leave me!" The cowman straightened up, his eyes glinting with righteous indignation. "What! Go 'way and leave you?--when you want him to stay? By--James! He's going to stay! Don't you worry, honey. He's going to stay, if I have to rope and hogtie him for you!" The girl stared into the frowning face of her father. There was no twinkle in the corner of his eyes. He was absolutely serious. For the first time in over two days her dimples flashed. Her eyes sparkled with merriment. Her lips parted. But she checked the gay laugh before it could burst out. "Oh!" she reproached herself. "How could I? And they still down there--and Tom suffering!" "Tom?" repeated Knowles. "Thomas Blake--your brother! That's why you got me started reading all those reports and engineering journals. You guessed it." "It did not seem possible. Yet I could not help hoping." "Things do happen our way--sometimes," qualified Knowles. "Mrs. Blake--Jenny--says Lafe brought up word that the project can be put through. I meant to fight. But now--he is your brother, and he has done something no man ever before thought could be done--he has surveyed Deep Canyon. He has me beat. I've told Mrs.--Jenny straight out." "I know he will do what is right by you, dear, dear Daddy." "He's your brother, honey. That settles it." _ |
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